Hospice volunteer receives 10-year service pin, retires

HOUSTON — Dying, like being born, is a natural process all living things undergo, says Hospice’s Ginny Stocker. But even though death is one of life’s certainties, few of us are eager to talk death and the feelings of loss that come with it, she said.

Laura Brady, 81, began volunteering with Hospice about 10 years ago, a few years after her husband of 50 years died in 2000.

“Our family received wonderful care through Hospice,” she said. “When I decided to volunteer it was sort of a payback.”

She received her 10-year service pin at a Hospice meeting Aug. 8. The pin also marks an end to Brady’s long career as a volunteer. After a decade of service, Brady said it has become too big a challenge for her to travel the 20 miles one way from her home in Houston to the Hospice office in Wasilla.

For about half of those years, Brady’s made the weekly trip with her friend LaVerne Larson, who she also recruited as a Hospice volunteer.

Both women were married for 50 years before their husbands’ deaths, and both women relied on Hospice for their mate’s end of life care.

At Hospice, volunteer coordinator Stocker said the two have provided steady help throughout her five-year tenure.

“Whatever I couldn’t get done, they did,” she said. “Our volunteers are amazing.”

In addition to filing and other routine office support, Stocker said the two friends also worked on the monthly Journeys Newsletter, which Hospice families receive through the Bereavement Program for a year after a patient’s death.

When she began volunteering, Brady said she’d imagined herself doing patient care. But looking back, she said she thinks working in the office was ideal.

“I think I was happier doing office work,” she said. “It’s a challenging work to be in the field providing care.”

‘It’s hard to accept

that you are dying’

Hospice provides end-of-life care for people who are dying, not seeking treatment, Stocker said.

The team of care providers includes a doctor on staff, nurses, personal care assistants, a chaplain and social workers who take care of patients and their families, she said.

If she could change anything about how people currently use Hospice care, Stocker said she’d encourage families to sign up sooner.

Beyond patient care, she said staff members also are trained to help the whole family make the journey through the grieving process. But when families don’t sign up until the last week of a patient’s life, that doesn’t give Hospice much time to get to know the family and figure out how best to help each member grieve.

“It’s hard to accept that you are dying,” Stocker said. “People sometimes equate signing up with Hospice as signing their death certificate.”

Hospice isn’t about working toward cures, it is about the process of dying, she said. People need a doctor’s referral to join Hospice and usually the care is provided to people with an estimated six months to live, or less, Stocker said.

After signing up for Hospice for her husband, Brady said her family took the social worker’s advice and went directly to the funeral home and made arrangements.

“When he passed away, all they had to do in that moment was call the funeral home and they came to the home to transport his body to the funeral home for burial preparations,” Brady said. “So many little things you wouldn’t think of.”

She said Hospice was a good fit for her husband, who developed a strong bond with his nurse. He’d look forward to her visits and make plans for what they would do when he saw her next. One Monday, she arrived late and by the time she got there he was already watching Monday Night Football. So she just sat with him and watched the game, Brady said. He died that next Sunday, and this was the last adventure the friends shared, she said.

“For us it was just great,” Brady said. “It enabled him to die at home in his own bed.”

Volunteers needed

There is a need for more Hospice volunteers across the Mat-Su Borough, Stocker said. A training class is planned in the core area, but she still needs a few more folks to sign up. Now there are about 25 volunteers across the Valley, but there have been as many as 40, Stocker said.

Right now there are 20 to 25 patients and about as many volunteers, she said. But the goal is to build a network of trained Hospice volunteers across the Valley.

Training classes are planned in Talkeetna and in the core area in the next few weeks.

Stocker said volunteers at the old Palmer hospital saw a need and started the program in the mid-1980s.

Now Hospice is housed in Wasilla at the Mat-Su Regional Outpatient Center, at the corner of Bogard Road and Crusey Street.

Stocker said when patients enter Hospice care, doctors deal with pain management first, then staff works to enhance the patient’s quality of life, and finally, the quality of life for the patient’s family.

Larson said the program doesn’t include a nurse at each patient’s home around the clock, but nurses are always on call.

“They come as soon as you need them,” she said.

‘It’s like you lost

half of yourself’

After a two-year health battle, she said Providence made arrangements for him to be in Hospice during the last week of his life.

That first winter, Larson said she spent in Hawaii with family. There, she connected with a Hospice grief support group, which she described as a lifesaver.

“That’s what got me through that first winter,” LaVerne said.

After the death of her husband, Brady said she went to her kids’ house for fours months and thought she would be through grieving. Not so.

“It’s like you lost half of yourself,” Brady said of losing her husband of 50 years. “I was 18 when we got married.”

Brady and Larson met at the Mid Valley Senior Center following the death of their husbands. It was Brady who nudged Larson to volunteer with Hospice, a commitment Larson says she plans to continue although Brady is retiring.

“You reinvent yourself a little bit,” Brady said of her volunteer work.

Throughout much of their lives their focus had been their husbands, homes and children, the friends said.

“Now I do all kinds of things,” Brady said.

For more information or to sign up for Hospice training, contact 352-4800.

Contact Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or

heather.resz@frontiersman.com.